Sports
‘Ambassador’ Bean
A Billy Bean interview in advance of Night OUT
Former Major League Baseball player Billy Bean will be at Night OUT next week. (Photo courtesy Bean)
Last month’s heckling of the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus at a Padres game may have given the community a collective, social media-infused “WTF” moment, but while it was certainly embarrassing for the singers, it appears to have been more of a snafu than a malicious joke.
DJ Artform was in the booth when the music started. He says the chorus planned to sing along to their own recording of the piece but he accidentally played the wrong recording.
“In a moment of panic I went to the first thing I saw that said anthem and unfortunately the female vocal artist is what played over the PA system and it was an extremely embarrassing moment,” he said later. “Those are my mistakes and I own up to them. I hold myself accountable. My stomach was in knots. I should have intervened. I should have turned it down. There’s a lot of ‘coulda, woulda, shouldas’ that we could have done to avoid the incident. … My heart was racing. Every second was an hour.”
Roughly 100 choir members were on the field and they were subsequently escorted off amidst homophobic heckling from fans.
Major League Baseball (MLB) immediately launched an investigation and found the incident to be an unintentional mistake. MLB ramped up its efforts to address social conscience in 2014 when organizers hired Billy Bean as their ambassador for inclusion. He has since segued into the role of vice president of social responsibility and inclusion. Bean came out as gay in 1999, four years after his final season as an MLB player.
“I have a lot of friends in San Diego and they were texting me in real time while the incident was happening,” Bean says. “I am relieved that everyone understands that it was an unfortunate mistake.”
Social media quickly picked up on what happened and it was covered on all major news outlets. Everyone was looking for an explanation.
“The most frustrating thing was that the MLB investigation took close to four days and we were not able to communicate with anyone on the topic during that time,” Bean says. “The immediacy of people’s desire to get to the bottom of things really speaks to the nature of how quickly people find out and want an answer.”
Bean’s duties with MLB go well beyond the LGBT community and include other areas of social responsibility including life skills, issues with domestic violence, work with urban youth academies and owner’s diversity committees.
“The closer we get to MLB players, the faster the message gets to the fans. It’s the way the world works now,” Bean says. “Being the best product for our fans is very important. We wouldn’t have a platform to get the message out without being such a great product.”
With everything being tracked these days on social media, MLB players find themselves in a situation where their words and actions are representative of the team for which they are playing.
“I encourage everyone I meet with to leave baseball better than it was when they started,” Bean says. “I try to show them situations where they will feel some correlation to the LGBT community.”
When Team D.C. held its second Night OUT at the Nationals event in 2006, organizers asked to bring in the Washington Gay Men’s Chorus and were met with reluctance by MLB, club owners at that time.
“MLB had never heard of the Washington Gay Men’s Chorus which showed how uninformed they were about the LGBT community at that time,” says Brent Minor, executive director of Team D.C. “These LGBT community nights are important parts of educating the larger community about us including the fact that we are very enthusiastic sports fans.”
This year’s line-up of guests at Night OUT at the Nationals is an indication as to how far MLB has come in terms of inclusion.
“The journey we have been on has been filled with obstacles but today we are not getting resistance from my sport,” Bean says. “We have been handed a platform and we have to capitalize on it.”
Night OUT at the Nationals will be held on Tuesday, June 14 as the Washington Nationals take on the Chicago Cubs.
This year’s line-up includes:
MLB’s Billy Bean — special guest
Actor Leslie Jordan — first pitch
Bishop Gene Robinson — line-up cards
Congresswoman Krysten Sinema — play ball announcement
Washington Gay Men’s Chorus — National anthem (Live)
Singer Ty Herndon — With the chorus and soloing on “Take Me Out”
Spirit Award — Mona Alcazar. Accepted by her wife, Nancy Bates
If the umpire rotation stays on schedule, MLB’s first openly gay umpire, Dale Scott, will be handling home plate duties.
Sports
Attitude! French ice dancers nail ‘Vogue’ routine
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry strike a pose in memorable Olympics performance
Madonna’s presence is being felt at the Olympic Games in Italy.
Guillaume Cizeron and his rhythm ice dancing partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry of France performed a flawless skate to Madonna’s “Vogue” and “Rescue Me” on Monday.
The duo scored an impressive 90.18 for their effort, the best score of the night.
“We’ve been working hard the whole season to get over 90, so it was nice to see the score on the screen,” Fournier Beaudry told Olympics.com. “But first of all, just coming out off the ice, we were very happy about what we delivered and the pleasure we had out there. With the energy of the crowd, it was really amazing.”
Watch the routine on YouTube here.
Italy
Olympics Pride House ‘really important for the community’
Italy lags behind other European countries in terms of LGBTQ rights
The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ rights in their country.
Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Washington Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.
Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)
Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”
ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.
ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”
• Marriage equality for same-sex couples
• Depathologization of trans identities
• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples
“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”
“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.
Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”
Seven LGBTQ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.
Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.
The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.
“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.
Bisexual US skier wins gold
Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing in the games.
Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.
Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”
Puerto Rico
Bad Bunny shares Super Bowl stage with Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga
Puerto Rican activist celebrates half time show
Bad Bunny on Sunday shared the stage with Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl halftime show in Santa Clara, Calif.
Martin came out as gay in 2010. Gaga, who headlined the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show, is bisexual. Bad Bunny has championed LGBTQ rights in his native Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
“Not only was a sophisticated political statement, but it was a celebration of who we are as Puerto Ricans,” Pedro Julio Serrano, president of the LGBTQ+ Federation of Puerto Rico, told the Washington Blade on Monday. “That includes us as LGBTQ+ people by including a ground-breaking superstar and legend, Ricky Martin singing an anti-colonial anthem and showcasing Young Miko, an up-and-coming star at La Casita. And, of course, having queer icon Lady Gaga sing salsa was the cherry on the top.”
La Casita is a house that Bad Bunny included in his residency in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, last year. He recreated it during the halftime show.
“His performance brought us together as Puerto Ricans, as Latin Americans, as Americans (from the Americas) and as human beings,” said Serrano. “He embraced his own words by showcasing, through his performance, that the ‘only thing more powerful than hate is love.’”
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